Category: Poems

Redwings come in to my overcast garden, unusual visitors from snow- covered country they come in two, three and more to feed on little orange berries, displacing blackcaps, wren and dunnock who hop down to lower branches. I sit silent and watch from my window and reflect this seasonal delight is gifted to me by … Continue reading redwings on a grey December day

and this is how it makes me feel: like a ritual unthinking an undrinkable cup bitter hollow part of someone else's confusing dream hands withdrawn restrained a criminal alone invisible to time ebbing not flowing seasick a fist shrinking in slow motion a shadeless bulb naked on a leafless tree shattered in a puddle draining … Continue reading failure

I'd love to build you a pyramid or minaret up to the sky. I'd put the Taj Mahal in shadow and the Kremlin walls would shake. Let Liberty light her candle and Sydney's Opera House sing. I'm going to pitch my tent on an honest Scottish cliff-top and face the storms of a northern sea.

Alarm clock brings for what the morning clings. Early dawn's fight breaks a good dream's night and I rub my wise, wonder where time lies tumbling out of head. Pour hot coffee out. Drips drip from the doubt, fill my coffee sup to the brim and up. Gulp it hurriedly town in my dressing gown... … Continue reading mostly okay

So you're both light and dark, taste sweet when you're sour, chase all hope to despair and all the way back? And there's a field of green tears for an injury-time winner: salt and sauce pal? With the sweet smile of reason fixed in a dark-stained tenement grin, a woman gives free hugs to all, … Continue reading salt and sauce

On a solitary walk on a simple spring day a cruciform figure dominates the sky, hanging over the precipice ready to claim unknowing souls. Below, worn down on a tide-threatened beach, I might see a holy portent: 'in hoc signo vinces', and a new God waiting to be crowned to rule over an old, autumnal … Continue reading falco peregrinus

Why have you come to this place? There is no peace here, there never can be. The frightened air fills with steam from within you, you like an industrial relic from a bygone shore. My kind extracted your past lives unkind for a good many nights all the lights on our street, our dining room … Continue reading to a whale lost on a beach

What are you thinking, little cat? It's so hard to tell. You purr and pounce, I tickle your tummy and the world seems well. But now what is it, little cat? Filling you with fear. I move an inch, you run a mile when shadows step near. Was it a bad dream, little cat? That … Continue reading sanza

her flowers in the morning bluebells freed from forgotten trees by ancient civilisation drift to the wild ocean, Atlantic rocks crested by waves of defiant white campion --- her manxies by daylight in among the beauty lie little bags of bones, victims of the bright night, as scattered mourning stones --- her greater black-backeds remote … Continue reading Skomer in May

Today, our airbed half deflates as the dawn chorus sings. It has held us together in wild and beautiful places where one day I hope we'll return. It has seen the sun come up and warm our sweet, sleepy heads. But here, in our own house it has shrunk away beneath me, beneath the extra … Continue reading half-deflated airbed